When It's Easier To Laugh Than Cry

We received an alert or several that a sly wind from the east was coming in. Apparently the air from wherever was about to cross over from Colorado and Wyoming and ultimately hit our quiet little Salt Lake City.

I'm told high winds can result when a huge build-up of cold air hits our mountains and then pours down them into our very lovely valley. 

By early Tuesday morning all of those nannies from Mary Poppins were getting launched directly over my house as we legit had category 3 hurricane winds, which is not a thing I thought I'd say about my 2020 at 4,500 feet elevation, deep in the desert mountains of Utah.

As it turns out, high winds are terrifying. Nearly the entire city immediately lost power. I say "nearly" because somehow our house seemed to be the only place in town that had electricity (it's been a few days since the storm and there are still large parts of the city without power). My friend Emily came over to work from my house after this happened at her house:

Sand Dunes

Skylar finished his test a week ago yesterday and listeners, I now have a husband with too much time on his hands.

Remember last week when I wrote to you and I was like "I'm an ignored housewife who can't get her man's attention" and you all felt really sad for me and you sent me presents that haven't arrived yet but I'm sure they're on their way because you aren't the kind of people who don't send presents at a time like this?

Well, now Skylar Westerdahl is spending his days following me around the house asking me on a never-ending loop "now what are you doing" and when I don't answer him right away he follows it up with "why aren't you talking to me?" and look. I love attention. But apparently I have my limits because sometimes I pretend to go to the bathroom to poop now just to have a minute to myself. AND I HAVEN'T POOPED SINCE 2012.

I asked Skylar if he had any hobbies he might turn to since he now has like three weeks off, which in COVID 2020 time is the same as eleventy millennia, and he said his only one is "being a good husband and loving you" which is so annoying but also I'm obviously not going to try to talk him out of that as a hobby.

He really is getting more manipulative now that he's in his 30s.

Photos of People Having an Authentic Time at my Wedding

I'm going to give you a bunch of details about the wedding with some actual wedding photos, etc. in the coming days. But for now, I want to leave you with this gem.

In the chaos of the morning and the photos with family and friends, someone took my phone. I think it was in my pocket and it was suggested I remove it for the pictures. I don't remember, really. It was all a whirlwind.

At the end of the wedding, my friend Caitlin handed my phone to me, saying she had it for a few hours and "don't worry. I took lots of pictures of people having a very authentic time."

I thanked her for her thoughtfulness and took the phone. On the drive back to the house I started looking through the photos she captured and discovered, well . . .

In 1968

This time in Strangerville, Salt Lake City will give you a giant flag to help you cross the street. And then a story about fixing up an old bicycle (written version below).

Story

In 1968, by Eli McCann

Production by Eli McCann & Meg Walter

*****

In 1968

by Eli McCann

Skylar just walked into the house. His face is red right now because he just climbed off of a bike. The bike was my dad’s a long time ago. He said he purchased it when he was younger than I am now, but that’s impossible because he has always been over 60.

My dad bought the bike as he was graduating high school in 1968. It cost him $400. I know those details, because he has made sure I’m clear about them the dozen times I’ve mentioned the bike to him in the last three years. He smiles when he says it, raising his eyebrows a little, and nodding. “$400,” he repeats, somehow emphasizing every syllable in perfect equality, “in 1968.”

Halee From High School

We borrowed a stage for Strangerville Live after Meg didn't "want to be murdered" by my attempt to build one.

Under no circumstances was she willing to stand on something I created. I don't know whether this is because she deems me incompetent or malicious, and honestly I don't know which is more offensive. Or true.

Once it was determined that building the stage was not a viable option, we went back to the drawing board, hoping to figure out where the hell we could get one. A stage. Not a drawing board. Although now that I think about it, I'm in the market for one of those, too. That, and a Heart of the Ocean.

I couldn't think of where else to find a stage, and that's when I took to what the kids' moms are calling "The Facebooks."

It seemed like a shot in the dark, but I posted there, asking if anyone had a stage that could fit in the back of a Subaru Outback and had very little history of killing Meg's unborn children.

My friend Emily responded by sending me somewhere around 600 text messages with DIY ideas, unaware that Meg had already vetoed even the continued suggestion that I would be allowed around more tools.

Camping: The Ground Got Harder

(In case you missed it, we announced our next really fun Strangerville Live show. Check out this link for info and tickets; as always, tickets are first come/first serve and there is some limited seating.)

Two years ago I decided that I needed to occasionally force myself to do what the kids are calling "commune with nature." To do so, I told myself that I was going to make it a priority to go camping one time a year.

The reason for this, and I swear to you I'm not joking, is to get myself to be more grateful for shelter.

It's not because I think camping will be fun. It's not to prove anything to myself. It's because I love the inside so much and I wanted to find a way to love it even more so I decided that if I slept outside once a year, the pure contrast would make my couch and temperature-controlled home so much sweeter.

Look. I've basically said this before. Camping is an insult to our ancestors who invented electricity and the internet and Netflix so that we would never have to go outside under any circumstances whatsoever. Going camping is basically nothing more than squandering an inheritance. Except it's miserable instead of fun to do.

But despite my respect for all the McCanns and Whittlebottoms who have come before me, including the ones who were polygamists, I have committed myself to this once-a-year camping vow.

Mansplaining

A few years ago I was at Bob and Cathie's house and I saw Bob's 1968 beautiful green road bike in a pile of junk. I asked my parents what they were doing with this bike and they were like "we're throwing it away because we don't value things anymore" which isn't exactly what they said but that's what I heard.

So I screamed at them a thing I've screamed at them before, which thing is why my garage is currently filled to capacity with a 1970s roll-top desk, various shelving units, and other odds and ends from the 80s, "IF YOU CAN'T TAKE CARE OF YOUR THINGS, I WILL."

As I was putting the bike on my bike rack on the back of my car, Bob was like "are you even going to use that?" and I was like "ONLY EVERY DAY OF MY LIFE."

As of yesterday, that bike had been sitting in my garage untouched for three years.

Skylar is starting medical school at the University of Utah in the fall because he's a genius and he's going to give all of us free and invasive physicals once a year for the rest of our lives. He told me recently that he wanted to buy a bike to ride to school sometimes. So I told him he could have Bob's old bike if we could get it in working condition.

The Worst Movie Ever Made

So last night Anna, Emily, Skylar, and I decided that since it was one of the final "good" weekends of the year in Salt Lake City, we would take advantage of the weather. 

I'm not kidding you about my town right now. It is unbelievably gorgeous. Not to get all basic white girl on you, but I love me some Autumn. I'm like totes pumpkin spice lol rofl leggings warm fire hot cocoa about it and I like totes pumpkin spice don't care.

But this year is extra beautiful. I think it's because we had such a wet winter season last year and that led to a greener spring and summer, which means a more colorful fall. 

Check it out. This is from my run up Emigration Canyon with some friends.

Pictures from my Phone & Weekly Distractions

You guys! Look! I Pictured and Distracted! I almost forgot how to do this! The last time we had one of these posts they hadn't even invented electricity yet.

But in even more important news, I have our Snuggie winners. Thank you so much to all of you who shared your kind words about Stranger and your fun memories of this community over the last week. I will cherish the comments section of the ten-year anniversary post for many years to come.

And now dddddrrdrerdrdrdrdrdrdrdrdrdr (that's supposed to be a drum roll. I don't know how to type it out) our winners of their very own Snuggies and a lifetime supply of meatballs (I'm kidding about the meatballs. Don't try to cash in on that. I only have enough meatballs to supply you for like 12 years) are dddddrerdrdrdrdrdrdrdrdrdxddrrdrdrdrjkdrjdrdrdrdrkittydrdrddrdrdrdrdrdrdrdrd

Jayne, Jake, and Gretchen

Congrats! So all you guys need to do is go to the store and buy a Snuggie. 

I'M KIDDING CALM DOWN THIS ISN'T A SCAM.

Jayne, Jake, and Gretchen, please shoot me an email and tell me where I can send your Snuggie. I may also slip in some dirty laundry for you to wash and send back. I haven't done it in like 5 years.

And now, your Pictures & Distractions:

Guess Who Happened To Be On My Flight Home

My body is jet-lagged and I'm not sure anymore what day or time it is, but I'm told by a thing that the kids are calling "the calendar" that Strangerville Live is happening THIS WEEK.

THIS WEEK, Y'ALL.

I decided that for this show I would finally tell a story I've alluded to on Stranger many times over the years, but one which I've abstained from sharing because I wasn't sure whether all 1,200 relevant statutes of limitations had passed yet. 

Does this count as a teaser? Do you feel teased?

Hungarian Toilet Water

After a day or two in Bratislava, we took a train to Vienna where a very angry Uber driver yelled at us in several languages we could not identify before dumping us out onto the street in front an airbnb apartment we had booked.

Skylar, who decided to come late to the party flew into Vienna later that night, just in time to force us to go to a symphony that was so boring that if you took my pulse at any point during the performance you would have discovered that I actually had a negative heartbeat, which means that the symphony was not just taking time out of my present. It was somehow taking life away that I had already lived.

I posted about this on Instagram and somebody excitedly asked what the orchestra played, to which I responded "EXACTLY." This person is a conductor or music chief or whatever the hell the person is called so I probably now have one less Instagram friend.

Vienna was lovely and without much drama, until the last night when we decided it was time to try to book an airbnb for our next city, Budapest.

Castles

In the last 24 hours I have ended up very naked in a castle and shaken down by angry Slovakian authorities. Yes, these were two separate incidences. Yes, knowing something about my travel history, you had good reason to ask.

Let me step back and explain.

We left that slaughterhouse in the country after noticing that the vast majority of the dishes in the kitchen had lipstick stains in places I never in my life considered areas on which someone might put a mouth.

We climbed into our car and pointed it west toward the Slovakian central mountains.

Every twenty minutes or so, the trees would clear and a GIANT castle on top of a mountain would come into view. And when I say "giant," I mean like "we thought the castle was the just the top half of the mountain until we got close enough and realized that what we thought was God's doing was actually the doing of some very sad people who probably had terrible backs but Jane Fonda level buns of steel from having to haul eleventy million rocks up to the top."

Slovakian Ramblings

I took a flight from Salt Lake City on Thursday night. A flight to another flight to another flight to another flight to maybe a portal of some kind and then I think to a horse and buggy followed by that one car from Back to the Future, and after eleven hundred hours of being on moving things and not sleeping and being coughed on by strangers, I ended up in Krakow Poland.

My friends, Anna and Emily, joined me on the journey. They had never seen Krakow before and I would be lying if I told you that 78% of the reason we went was not so I could take them to this underground restaurant I found several years ago called Babci Malina's where this old lady screams at you and then gives you more comfort food than any human should ever try to consume.

We were eating said comfort food a few minutes after arriving in the city. And then we were off to go church-exploring, because every time I end up in Eastern Europe I think I'm catholic or Russian Orthodox.

There's this very old and very massive church in the middle of Old Town in Krakow. I had been in it before. The place has always confused me because it has a very large chapel, and then a series of long stone-walled corridors that lead to nowhere. But the corridors are usually blocked by various black gates.

A Special TV Surprise

It was Survivor night, so the usual crew gathered in my home. I flipped on the TV. There we were, minding our own business, like good Christians/Jews/Muslims/Americans/muggles/beliebers, when suddenly,

Anna: IS THAT MATT BROOME!!!!???!?

Eli: No. Matt Broome would tell us if he was on TV. Surely he wouldn't keep something like this a secret.

We rewound the commercial because these are the days of miracle and wonder and you can do that now. We watched it eleventy hundred times. And we had a major debate. Well, not so much of a debate. More of a "everyone telling Eli he's wrong."

Adam: That's Matt!

Eli: No.

Anna: Yes it is!

I. Went. Camping.

A couple of weeks ago I got to thinking about how much I hate camping and how I don't trust anyone who claims to like it because it's not possible to like it and if my Mormon pioneer ancestors knew they were crossing the plains so we could all be homeless a few times every summer and poop into holes in the ground they probably would have just stayed in Ireland where they wouldn't get skin cancer or have to learn how to make doilies.

But then I saw an REI commercial and I was like, "I would look cute in those clothes." And I wasn't wrong.